Bigger's Actions

In the film “Native Son” by Richard Wright, Bigger Thomas is the main character of this film. In the begging Bigger had to kill a rat, he lived with just is sisters and mother meaning he had no father figure in his life. Bigger went straight to the streets with his friends to plan a robbery on the Bum’s store. They felt like since the owner was a white male they needed to bring guns; the plan fell threw. Bigger gets a job offer from the Daltons family, he goes to watch a movie about the daughter Mary Dalton. Leads to Bigger finding out that Mary is dating a communist and that herself is rebelling against her family. After the movie he met up with his friends again and when one of them are late Bigger gets full of anger bringing out a knife of his friend. After the argument with his friends Bigger goes

He is not a very nice person. He is rude to his mother, he is a bully to his sister and to his friends. However, the situation that Bigger is forced to be in, and what drives him to make most of his actions, creates a sympathetic tone where the reader feels bad for Bigger. It is not his fault that he comes from a poor family or that he is a black man in a time where racism is very prevalent.

Throughout the whole novel Bigger had felt cornered and intimidated by the white man and who they were. However, this man was different from the others. He treated Bigger as a normal human being, not as a downtrodden person or a murderer, just a normal human being. This is the only instince in which this happens in the whole novel. Wright used it primarily to show that he himself did not feel as if all whites were bad but that because of stereotyping, many were. Wright goes out of his way to show that this man was not under the inlfluence of stereotyping and to show the decent side of some whites.

Native Son by Richard Wright is about a black man, Bigger Thomas, who is becomes the chauffeur of the Daltons, a rich white family, and accidently kills the daughter, Mary. He attempts to cover his crime by putting the blame on someone else, but he is eventually caught and sentenced to death. Bigger deceives in an attempt avoid the consequences he knows the white world will deliver to him with and this deception contributes to Wright’s message of what racism does to the oppressed and additionally puts Wright’s communist party in a positive light.

Wright creates a story about a young man afraid to fly into his destiny as a black African American male. Bigger is afraid to live life because he knows deep inside he will never amount up to the “white man”. Because of this great deal of fear Bigger ends up killing two women one being white and he ends up going to prison for life and getting the death sentence. In every reason possible was Bigger most definitely wrong for his actions; but there is a story very similar to his. Leopold and Loeb were two students who kidnapped and murdered 14 year old Robert Franks. Both men were sentenced to life plus 99 years. Loeb was murdered by a prisoner in 1963, but Leopold was released on parole in 1958. It's quite funny that Leopold was released with parole but Bigger stayed in prison and had to die because of his wrongful doings. There is honestly no difference between Bigger and Leopold, they both committed a unacceptable crime. So why is it that Leopold gets to have some freedom and Bigger did not? I know the difference, it is the color of their skin. These policeman and judges seem to have pity on the white americans who commit a crime big or small. But when the tables are turned the African American male or female seems to have no pity, no help or parole. These black men and women are being thrown into jails or prisons for a great lump sum of years. Some make it out to see daylight

Wright implies, suggest, and even says that Bigger Thomas is an embodiment of the black revolt against the injustices of white caste society and that this revolt often takes the form of crime against this same white society. Borne into a white society, hostile and indifferent, Bigger becomes the total embodiment of that city hatreds and prejudice against the black man.

In book one, talks about crimes Bigger have done against other blacks, but never against a white man. He and his best friend Gus “play white,” and Bigger talks about, how “they don’t let us do nothing” referring to white people (Wright 17). Bigger feels that white people are going to force him to do something he cannot control. Bigger talks about robbing a white man named Mr.Blum. His friends are hesitant about the robbery and Bigger tells them, “ If old Blum was a black man, you-all would be itching to go. ‘Cause he’s white, everybody’s scared” (Wright 20). Bigger and his gang of friends have no problem committing crimes against their own people. They had never thought of committing a crime that involves crossing a racial boundary.

Wright uses Bigger’s psychological corruption to send a message to the reader. It offers a new view on the underlying effects of racism on the black community of the time period. Wright creates Bigger from the diversity he saw throughout American society. “I made the discovery that Bigger Thomas was not black all the time; he was white, too, and there were literally millions of him, everywhere... I became conscious, at first dimly, and then later on with increasing clarity and conviction, of a vast, muddied pool of human life in America. It was as though I had put on a pair of spectacles whose power was that of an x-ray enabling me to see deeper into the lives of men. Whenever I picked up a newspaper, I 'd no longer feel that I was reading of the doings of whites alone (Negroes are rarely mentioned in the press unless they 've

As we read Native Son, Bigger’s resulting attitude toward the whites is a combination of anger and powerful fear. He fears the whites as an overpowering force that he cannot

Wrights depiction of Bigger through his use of figurative language techniques, reveals Bigger as an unstable and violent character, and to the reader Biggers character creates an uneasy

  In Native Son, Wright employs Naturalistic ideology and imagery, creating the character of Bigger Thomas, who seems to be composed of a mass of disruptive emotions rather than a rational mind joined by a soul. This concept introduces the possibility that racism is not the only message of the novel, that perhaps every person would feel as isolated and alone as Bigger does were he trapped in such a vicious cycle of violence and oppression. Bigger strives to find a place for himself, but the blindness he encounters in those around him and the bleak harshness of the Naturalistic society that Wright presents the reader with close him out as effectively as if they had shut a door in his

When analyzing Bigger Thomas, Richard Wright’s protagonist in the novel Native Son, one must take into consideration the development of his characterization. Being a poor twenty-year-old Black man in the south side of Chicago living with his family in a cramped one- bedroom apartment in the 1930’s, the odds of him prospering in life were not in his favor. Filled with oppression, violence, and tragedy, Bigger Thomas’ life was doomed from the moment he was born. Through the novel, Bigger divulges his own dreams to provide for his family and to be anything but a “nobody.” Although Bigger struggled to fight through obstacles to pursue his dreams for the future, his chase for a better life came to an abrupt

He does explain that oppression and racism affected both whites the oppressors and blacks the oppressed. He also explains how a white like girl, befriended a black man, and that a lot of what happened was because of the lack of understanding of the others culture. Yet, I feel that Mr. Wright’s emphasis was more on the struggles that the African Americans endured during the 1930’s. I feel he felt that this oppression and racism affected them the most so he tends to favor their plight more than that of the whites. Wright uses this quote to express how Bigger felt, “To Bigger and his kind, white people were not really people: they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one’s feet in the dark.” (109) Wright does not downplay the suffering that they endured at the hands of the whites. He depicts their poverty, in Bigger’s case the cramped rat infested apartment his family lived in. Wright uses this quote to express the living conditions, "Gimme that skillet, Buddy," he asked quietly, not taking his eyes from the rat. Wright tells of some of their racial struggles and inequalities like not being able to be educated, being forced to live in areas that were not as good as those the whites lived in but still over paying for them. It reads “black people, even though they cannot get good jobs, pay twice as much rent as whites”(248) Wright also declares that Bigger was not even allowed a fair trial to defend himself even though he was guilty of what he had done because of this racism. The headlines “NEGRO RAPIST FAINTS AT INQUEST was featured in the Tribune and in the article, Bigger is described as looking “exactly like an ape with “exceedingly black skin” (279). Wright allows the reader to know that he feels this misguided oppression and racism shows that both races lost the realization that all men are

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, depicts the life of the general black community in Chicago during the 1930’s. Though African Americans had been freed from slavery, they were still burdened with financial and social oppression. Forced to live in small, unclean quarters, eat foods on the verge of going bad, and pay entirely too much for both, these people struggled not to be pressured into a dangerous state of mind (Bryant). All the while, they are expected to act subserviently before their oppressors. These conditions rub many the wrong way, especially Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the story. Though everyone he is surrounded by is going through all the same things that he is, growing up poor and uneducated has made Bigger angry at the whole world. You can see this anger in everything he does, from his initial thoughts to his final actions. Because of this, Bigger Thomas almost seems destined to find trouble and meet a horrible fate. Wright uses these conventions of naturalism to develop Bigger’s view of the white community(). With all of these complications, Bigger begins to view all white people as an overwhelming force that drags him to his end. Wright pushes the readers into Bigger’s mind, thoroughly explaining Bigger’s personal decay. Even Wright himself says that Bigger is in fact a native son, just a “product of American culture and the violence and racism that suffuse it” (Wright).

In Richard Wright’s Native Son, Bigger Thomas attempts to gain power over his environment through violence whenever he is in a position to do so.